Shopping lists are the shortest form of literary fiction. Three items, zero suspense. Milk, butter, bread. The art of minimalism before a person even leaves the house.
In the store, another genre begins: magical realism. Suddenly everything becomes more important than item number one. You go in for ordinary milk and walk out like a curator of an exhibition of products you never knew you wanted. A jar of tahini? Yes. Crunchy volcanic salt? Of course. Does this solve any problem? No.
The most important thing has a talent for disappearing. Not like drama, more like a minor glitch in the system. You remember a promotion for melon from Peru, but you forget why you actually came here. The brain works like Wi-Fi in a basement: supposedly there, but not where you need it.
Coming home looks like a failed unboxing. Bags crackle, contents gleam. On the countertop a still life arranges itself: chips with a “something new” flavor, pasta that was “a good price,” a beautiful bottle of olive oil that will wait for a day that will never come. Then the thought: “There’s no milk.”
This is where analysis ends. No psychology. No theory. People simply know how to focus on what shines, and the most important thing loses to a shelf designed by someone who truly hates consequences.
This is not a column about shopping. It’s a column about selective memory. And about the fact that a person can have seven kinds of pasta at home and not a single thing they actually went out for.